Too many damned questions, Wyatt thought, for a twelve-year-old. Though he wasn’t sure if that was, in fact, the boy’s age. As with the name, he hadn’t bothered to enquire. It hadn’t seemed relevant. It still didn’t, not really, because there had been little doubt the boy was older than his years would suggest. But then, Wyatt thought, taking a man’s life could add years to a person; it didn’t matter if they were twelve, twenty-five or seventy. He remembered how he’d felt, the first time.

Wyatt shook his head. “My men and I have to scout the trails. We might run into trouble. It’s all right, though. You’ll be safe with Reverend De Witt.” Wyatt turned. “Isn’t that so, Reverend?”

The question was greeted with matching smiles from a burly, ruddy-complexioned man in a wide-brimmed black preacher’s hat, black breeches and waistcoat, and a sturdy yet homely woman in a navy-blue dress and bonnet. The reverend’s hand rested paternally upon the shoulder of a small, auburn-haired girl of around nine years old. A grey mare stood saddled and ready behind them.

The woman laid a proprietorial hand on the pastor’s arm before he could respond to Wyatt’s question. “The young man will be as safe as houses, Lieutenant. Don’t you fret.”

The pastor nodded enthusiastically. “Indeed, Mother! The more the merrier! That’s what I always say!”

Wyatt wondered if, despite the attempt at humour, the preacher wasn’t trying a little too hard to exude a confidence he might not be feeling, in order to reassure his wife and young daughter and perhaps himself that they were about to embark on nothing more arduous than an afternoon stroll through the countryside.

Though, maybe, Wyatt thought, noting again the solid, square shoulders and the brawny muscles along the pastor’s upper arms, De Witt wasn’t quite the humble shepherd he made himself out to be. In fact, having already elicited details from some of the pastor’s fellow travellers, Wyatt knew he couldn’t have been.

Wyatt had learned that De Witt was pastor to a small community on the eastern side of the Dadenoscara Creek, who’d come to the attention of the Commissioners for, supposedly, inciting disaffection against the State of New York from his Sunday pulpit. As a consequence, the pastor had been served with an order to appear at the Albany County Sessions to answer charges of sedition. Having seen what had befallen former neighbours and fellow Tories who’d faced the same accusation, and knowing that his calling offered no protection against a charge of treason, the pastor had accepted Sir John’s alternative summons to join with other Loyalist families in their flight to the Canadian border.